Hertha as a Baby Name. Meaning and Origin of Hertha

What is the meaning of the name Hertha ?

The baby name Hertha is a girl name , 2 syllables long and is pronounced HER-tah.

Hertha is German, Germanic, Latin in Origin.

Hertha is a modern German feminine name attached to the Germanic goddess whom Tacitus records in Latin as Nerthus in Germania, about 98 CE. The Hertha spelling arose in German antiquarian and literary tradition, probably through variant manuscript readings and association with German Erde, earth. Nerthus is often compared with Old Norse Njǫrðr, but its Proto-Germanic form and literal sense remain disputed; it is not a secure Old High German compound of heri and hard.

As a given name, Hertha belongs chiefly to German-speaking Europe and the nineteenth-century revival of Germanic mythological names. English literary use includes Algernon Charles Swinburne’s poem Hertha, where the figure is an earth-mother goddess. Herta is the usual simplified spelling, while Nerthus remains the learned mythological form. In U.S. Social Security data, use peaks in the 1910s and declines sharply after mid-century.